Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most common severe autosomal recessive genetic disorder in the Caucasian population. It affects approximately 1 in 2000 live births in North America (Boat et al, The Metabolic Basis of Inherited Disease, 6th ed, pp 2649-2680, McGraw Hill, N.Y. (1989)). Approximately 1 in 20 persons are carriers of the disease.
Although the disease was first described in the late 1930's, the basic defect remains unknown. The major symptoms of cystic fibrosis include chronic pulmonary disease, pancreatic exocrine insufficiency, and elevated sweat electrolyte levels. The symptoms are consistent with cystic fibrosis being an exocrine disorder. Although recent advances have been made in the analysis of ion transport across the apical membrane of the epithelium of CF patient cells, it is not clear that the abnormal regulation of chloride channels represents the primary defect in the disease. Given the lack of understanding of the molecular mechanism of the disease, an alternative approach has therefore been taken in an attempt to understand the nature of the molecular defect through direct cloning of the responsible gene on the basis of its chromosomal location.
However, there is no clear phenotype that directs an approach to the exact nature of the genetic basis of the disease, or that allows for an identification of the cystic fibrosis gene. The nature of the CF defect in relation to the population genetics data has not been readily apparent. Both the prevalence of the disease and the clinical heterogeneity have been explained by several different mechanisms: high mutation rate, hetero zygote advantage, genetic drift, multiple loci, and reproductive compensation.
Many of the hypotheses can not be tested due to the lack of knowledge of the basic defect. Therefore, alternative approaches to the determination and characterization of the CF gene have focussed on an attempt to identify the location of the gene by genetic analysis.
Linkage analysis of the CF gene to antigenic and protein markers was attempted in the 1950's, but no positive results were obtained (Steinberg et al. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 8: 162-176, (1956); Steinberg and Morton Am. J. Hum. Genet 8: 177-189, (1956); Goodchild et al J. Med. Genet. 7: 417-419, 1976).
More recently, it has became possible to use RFLP's to facilitate linkage analysis. The first linkage of an RFLP marker to the CF gene was disclosed in 1985 (Tsui et al. Science 230: 1054-1057, 1985) in which linkage was found between the CF gene and an uncharacterized marker D0CRI-917. The association was found in an analysis of 39 families with affected CiP children. This showed that although the chromosomal location had not been established, the location of the disease gene had been narrowed to about 1% of the human genome, or about 30 million nucleotide base pairs.
The chromosomal location of the D0CRI-917 probe was established using rodent-human hybrid cell lines containing different human chromosome complements. It was shown that D0CR1-917 (and therefore the CF gene) maps to human chromosome 7.
Further physical and genetic linkage studies were pursued in an attempt to pinpoint the location of the CF gene. Zengerling et al (Am. J. Hum. Genet. 40: 228-236 (1987)) describe the use of human-mouse somatic cell hybrids to obtain a more detailed physical relationship between the CF gene and the markers known to be linked with it. This publication shows that the CF gene can be assigned to either the distal region of band q22 or the proximal region of band q31 on chromosome 7.
Rommens et al (Am. J. Hum. Genet. 43: 645-663, (1988)) give a detailed discussion of the isolation of many new 7q31 probes. The approach outlined led to the isolation of two new probes, D75122 and D7S340, which are close to each other. Pulsed field gel electrophoresis mapping indicates that these two RFLP markers are between two markers known to flank the CF gene, MET (White, R., Woodward S., Leppert M., et al. Nature 318: 382-384, (1985)) and D7S8 (Wainwright, B. J., Scambler, P. J., and J. Sclmidtke, Nature 318: 384:-385 (1985)), therefore in the CF gene region. The discovery of these markers provides a starting point for chromosome walking and jumping.
Estivill et al, (Nature 326: 840-845(1987)) disclose that a candidate cDNA gene was located and partially characterized. This however, does not teach the correct location of the CF gene. The reference discloses a candidate cDNA gene downstream of a CpG island, which are undermethylated GC nucleotide-rich regions upstream of many vertebrate genes. The chromosomal localization of the candidate locus is identified as the XV2C region. This region is described in European Patent Application 88303645.1. However, that actual region does not include the CF gene.
A major difficulty in identifying the CF gene has been the lack of cytologically detectable chromosome rearrangements or deletions, which greatly facilitated all previous successes in the cloning of human disease genes by knowledge of map position.
Such rearrangements and deletions could be observed cytologically and as a result, a physical location on a particular chromosome could be correlated with the particular disease. Further, this cytological location could be correlated with a molecular location based on known relationship between publicly available DNA probes and cytologically visible alterations in the chromosomes. Knowledge of the molecular location of the gene for a particular disease would allow cloning and sequencing of that gene by routine procedures, particularly when the gene product is known and cloning success can be confirmed by immunoassay of expression products of the cloned genes.
In contrast, neither the cytological location nor the gene product of the gene for cystic fibrosis was known in the prior art. with the recent identification of MET and D7S8, markers which flanked the CF gene but did not pinpoint its molecular location, the present inventors devised various novel gene cloning strategies to approach the CF gene in accordance with the present invention. The methods employed in these strategies include chromosome jumping from the flanking markers, cloning of DNA fragments from a defined physical region with the use of pulsed field gel electrophoresis, a combination of somatic cell hybrid and molecular cloning techniques designed to isolate DNA fragments from undermethylated CpG islands near CF, chromosome microdissection and cloning, and saturation cloning of a large number of DNA markers from the 7q31 region. By means of these novel strategies, the present inventors were able to identify the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis where the prior art was uncertain or, even in one case, wrong.
The application of these genetic and molecular cloning strategies has allowed the isolation and cDNA cloning of the cystic fibrosis gene on the basis of its chromosomal location, without the benefit of genomic rearrangements to point the way. The identification of the normal and mutant forms of the CF gene and gene products has allowed for the development of screening and diagnostic tests for CF utilizing nucleic acid probes and antibodies to the gene product. Through interaction with the defective gene product and the pathway in which this gene product is involved, therapy through normal gene product supplementation and gene manipulation and delivery are now made possible.